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Blackwell Companion: Substances Substances Aristotle divides “the things that there are” or “beings” (ta onta) into a number of different categories. He is not always consistent about how many categories there are (ten in Categories 1b25 and Topics 103b20, seven in Physics 225b5 and Metaphysics 1068a8), but the one he always lists first and regards as the most fundamental is the category of substance (ousia). ‘Substance’, the conventional English rendering of Aristotle’s word ousia, is in fact misleading, suggesting as it does a kind of stuff. The English term ‘substance’ entered the philosophical vernacular as a translation of the Latin substantia, which was itself an inadequate attempt to translate Aristotle. What ‘substance’ and substantia both miss is the connection of the word ousia to the verb ‘to be’ (einai). A better rendition might be ‘reality’ or ‘fundamental being’, but ‘substance’ is deeply entrenched in the philosophical literature and will be used here. A good gloss would be to say that ousiai are the “ontologically basic entities” (Loux 1991: 2). The Categories In the Categories, Aristotle further distinguishes between primary and secondary substances, and quickly makes it clear that primary substances are ontologically basic: “if the primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist” (2b5). By “the other things” Aristotle means the secondary substances as well as the items in all the other categories—qualities, quantities, relatives, etc. As examples of primary substances Aristotle gives “the individual man” (ho tis anthrôpos) and “the individual horse” (ho tis hippos) (2a13-14). Secondary substances include the species and genera under which the primary substances fall, such as man, horse, animal, etc. (2a15-18). Although he does not use the terms ‘universal’ (katholou) and ‘particular’ (kath’ hekaston) in the Categories, it is clear that Aristotle would count primary substances as particulars and secondary substances as universals (see [CHAPTER 11: UNIVERSALS]). For he tells us that primary substances are “not said of a subject” (2a14), whereas a secondary substance such as man “is said of a subject, the individual man” (1a21), and this conforms to his definition of ‘particular’ and ‘universal’ in De Interpretatione: “I call universal that which is by its nature predicated of a number of things, and particular that which is not; man, for instance, is a universal, Callias a particular” (17a37-b1). So the difference between primary and secondary substances is that the former are particulars and the latter are universals. What differentiates substances from everything else in the ontology of the Categories is that substances are “not in a subject” (1a20, 1b2, 2a14). Aristotle warns us that he is using this phrase in a somewhat technical sense: “By ‘in a subject’ I mean what is in something, not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is in.” (1a24-25). This relation of inherence (as traditional jargon has it) is clearly one of ontological dependence—something in a subject is incapable of independent existence—but precisely what an inherent item is supposed to be dependent on has been a matter of 1 significant scholarly dispute. (This dispute is thoroughly covered in [CHAPTER 9: ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES] and will not be pursued here.) Still, on any account of inherence, it is clear that, for Aristotle, shapes, sizes, and colors, for example, are inherent items. There are shapes (sizes, colors) only in so far as there are bodies shaped (sized, colored) in one way or another. Aristotle’s claim is that all inherent items ultimately inhere in substances. One might well conclude from this that all of the properties of a substance inhere in it, and hence that to be in a subject is simply to be a property of that subject, but that would not be quite right. For the Categories also introduces the notion of the differentiae of a substance—roughly, the properties that are in the definition of the substance—and maintains that these are not inherent (3a21-25): … the differentia is also not in a subject. For footed and two-footed are said of man as subject but are not in a subject; neither footed nor two-footed is in man. Since the definition of a thing mentions its essential properties, it is clear that inherence corresponds to what Aristotle elsewhere calls accidental (kata sumbebêkôs) predication: for a non-substance F to inhere in a substance x is for F to belong accidentally to x. (For more detail on differentiae and inherence, see [CHAPTER 9: ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES].) So non-substances are accidents, and accidents are ontologically dependent on substances. But one might well wonder whether the dependence is not mutual. That is, one might suppose that substances depend on non-substances in just the same way. For a substance can no more exist without any accidents than an accident can exist without belonging to any substance. Aristotle never discusses this “reverse” dependence—he neither asserts nor denies it—but it is clear that he thinks that in some way the ontological dependence of non-substances on substances is asymmetrical. One possible account of the asymmetry is this. Since non-substances are accidental to the substances they inhere in, a particular substance can exist without the particular accidents that inhere in it. That is not to say that the substance might be lacking in accidents altogether, but only that it is capable of possessing different accidents from the ones it actually has. A particular accident, on the other hand, is ontologically dependent on the particular substance that it inheres in; it could not exist without that particular substance. (This account of asymmetry presupposes the interpretation of inherence recommended in [CHAPTER 9: ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORIES].) So much for the priority of substances over non-substances. But what gives primary substances the edge over secondary substances? One might suppose that Aristotle thinks that secondary substances are also inherent, but he denies this (3a9-11): … as for secondary substances, it is obvious at once that they are not in a subject. For man is said of the individual man as subject but is not in a subject: man is not in the individual man. There must, then, be another kind of ontological dependence than inherence, since secondary substances are ontologically dependent on primary substances, but do not inhere in them. 2 Aristotle addresses this issue by pointing out that a primary substance is some this (tode ti, 3b10), since it is “indivisible and numerically one” (atomon kai hen arithmôi, 3b12). A secondary substance, on the other hand, although its name may be singular, is not really one, for “man and animal are said of many things” (3b17). So a secondary substance is not a this but a sort (poion ti). Since he uses the same word, poion, for the category of quality, Aristotle realizes that he must quickly dispel the impression that secondary substances are qualities. The name of a secondary substance, he says (3b19- 21): does not signify simply a certain qualification (poion), as white does. White signifies nothing but a qualification, whereas the species and the genus mark off the qualification of substance—they signify a certain sort of substance (poion tina ousian). The idea here seems to be that what makes species and genera secondary is that they are just kinds or collections. A species is just a collection of individuals, and a genus is just a wider collection of the individual members of the species that fall under it. Without those individuals, there would be no species, and without the species there would be no genera. For the species tiger to exist, for example, is just for there to be individual tigers. It is the individual tigers and the other individual plants and animals that are the real things; their species and genera are simply the way the specimens are classified and organized. The species and genera of non-substance categories, such as red and color in the category of quality, are doubly dependent. For they are collections of individual qualities which are themselves ontologically dependent on substances. Once again, one might wonder whether there is a mutual ontological dependence here, this time between primary and secondary substances. For although Aristotle never makes this claim in the Categories, it would seem that a given primary substance depends for its existence on its belonging to the particular species it belongs to. For Sheba to cease to be a tiger, one might say, is for her to cease to exist. In the Topics, Aristotle makes this dependence explicit (125b37-40): … it is impossible for a thing still to remain the same if it is entirely transferred out of its species, just as the same animal could not at one time be, and at another not be, a man. And the fact that the said-of relation seems to amount to what Aristotle elsewhere calls essential (kath’ hauto) predication makes this idea even more plausible. For when x is said of y, Aristotle tells us, both the name and the definition of x will be predicated of y (2a19-20). And the definition of x is the formula that signifies the essence of x (Topics 101b38, 154a31). We will return to the topic of essence below. For now, it is enough to note that individuals would seem to depend on their species as much as the species do on individuals. But although this dependence of individuals on their species is implicit in the Categories, it is left undeveloped in that work (Furth 1988; Loux 1991). The message of the Categories is that the fundamental entities—the primary substances—are the individuals that do not in turn depend on other individuals.
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